The Winner of the 2017 SITraN High Content Screening Picture Competition is Mohammed Karami, supervised by Dr Heather Mortiboys with 199 likes on twitter for his picture of blue and green stained cells titled 'Transformers'. Well done Mohammed!

Daniel and Amanda from Perkin Elmer visited SITraN today (8 November) and presented the ceremonial prize cheque to the winner as well as other goodies for the runners up in the competition.

A useful dialogue has been reinforced with Daniel and Amanda extending an invitation to talk at the next Perkin Elmer user group meeting about the science behind the images, which will continue the efforts being made to apply high content screening methodologies to our translational neuroscience research.

See Mohammed's winner picture (picture 2) below as well as all the shortlisted and runner up entries.

Mohammed (front) with shortlisted entrants (behind from left to right, Aurelie, Ruby, Noemi) and Perkin Elmer representatives Daniel and Amanda.

The competition ran from Monday 16th October until 30th October

Tweeters voted for their favourite image generated by the PerkinElmer Opera Phenix™ High-Content screening system by liking a tweet of the picture

Mohammed Karami has been announced winner and received a cheque of £500 from Perkin Elmer for High-Content-Imaging work from SITraN to be presented at an industry conference

See the shortlisted entries, runners up and terms and conditions below

We have 7 Academic groups currently using the Opera Phenix™ and two of these groups use it for multiple research projects. These projects are funded by a variety of sources, including charities, research councils and industrial collaborative projects.

The types of experiments being run on the machine range from relatively simple single-cell imaging of cells in culture that can be labelled, for example for mitochondria, through to more complex co-cultures of 2 or more cell types where specific cells may be counted or parts of them quantified for their neuronal like structures.

In particular, there are multiple projects using the Opera Phenix™ to identify potential new treatments for both Motor Neurone Disease and Parkinson’s disease. By taking a small skin biopsy from patients, skin cells with genetic changes particular to those patients can be studied or be reprogrammed into neurons and their support cells; the specialised cells of the nervous system that are affected in neurological diseases. The techniques developed in these studies can be applied to further areas like Alzheimer’s Disease and Multiple Sclerosis and drug screens can be run in addition to the cells being studied to learn more about the disease process and uncover new potential targets for treatment.

Some groups are using the Opera Phenix™ to image zebrafish. This is particularly challenging to consistently orientate the fish in the same way, but we are making good progress using additional features of the Opera Phenix to target specific neuronal populations. Zebrafish can be genetically engineered to model human diseases and provide an excellent way to screen drugs in vivo, for example for neuroprotective effects in Motor Neuron Disease, or for re-myelinating compounds in Multiple Sclerosis. Both patient-derived cell and zebrafish models will help us to look for potential new treatments for MND, Parkinson's disease, Multiple Sclerosis and other neurological disorders; an aim that is a major objective for the NIHR Sheffield Biomedical Research Centre.

Votes cast between 16 and 30 October of the four shortlisted Opera Phenix™ images below have been counted and the winner announced as Mohammed Karami for his picture imaginatively titled ' Transformers':

Terms of the Competition

To vote for your favourite image out of those shortlisted above for the 2017 SITraN high-content screening image:

Vote by ‘liking’ a tweet of picture you want to win

Simple retweeting will enable any likes on the retweet to be counted

If you retweet with comment this will lose any further votes on the retweet

Only one like per person will be counted

Competition starts Monday 16th October 9am, ends 30th October 5pm

Perkin Elmer is only responsible for providing the prize

Prize winner to be announced by 10th November

The following five images below were runners up, they did not appear in the twitter competition but are still being displayed here as interesting scientific images to come through our Opera Phenix high-content screening laboratory: